Along with Padres teammates Kyle Blanks and Nick Hundley, who also spent some of their most formative time with the Lake Elsinore Storm on their climb to the major leagues, Headley returned to “The Diamond” yesterday for an exhibition game against the Class A affiliate. Playfully, veterans like Adrian Gonzalez were pumping locals for details on whatever legend Headley had left behind.

Like the house on the hill. Actually, it looks more like a mansion on the mount, a huge home (now for sale) atop a promontory roughly 2,000 feet up and two miles beyond the tall right-field wall at the Storm’s impressive ballpark. Headley was asked how many times he’d hit the faraway house with one of his homers for the Storm in 2006.

“Twice,” said Headley, giving as well as he was getting. “The first time, catcher’s interference was called, so I had to do it again.”

Class A ball is not something a major league prospect wants to do again, but the occasion of a return as a big-leaguer to a ballpark and town he called home for a year in the California League was a sentimental occasion for a player who’ll be in the Padres’ starting lineup on Opening Day of 2010. It brought back memories, but it also brought home the point of how far they’ve come, a distance much farther than the 75 miles between Lake Elsinore and Petco Park.

“I walked in this afternoon and had kind of a smirk on my face,” Blanks said before the Padres’ 7-1 win over the Storm. “I was just remembering my time here — my favorite time in the minors, without a doubt the most fun I had.”

Lake Elsinore is considered one of minor league baseball’s premier organizations and environments, and with the exception of right fielder Will Venable and starting pitcher Mat Latos, each of the homegrown products now with the Padres passed through the Storm.

Padres pitching coach Darren Balsley was on the staff of the Lake Elsinore club that, with Jake Peavy as its ace, won 99 games and the Minor League Team of the Year Award in 2001. Several of the Storm players matched last night against the Padres were on the Fort Wayne team that tied the Midwest League record with 101 wins.

“Elsinore was a stop along the way, and there can be a lot of stops,” Headley said. “But if you talk to the guys who’ve come through here in our organization, they all say this was an enjoyable place to play baseball.”

Enjoyable, and instructional. For the most part, players first assigned to Lake Elsinore are somewhere between 20 and 22 years old. Blanks turned 21 on the night he helped the Storm clinch the league’s Southern Division championship, a birthday he recalls with a smile as “rough, but fun.”

Hundley began the 2006 season with Blanks at Fort Wayne, but played the last 57 games that summer with the Storm.

He recalled the perk of hitting a home run for Lake Elsinore, arriving at his locker after the game and finding a couple of hundred dollars, collected by a pass of the hat through the stands by ushers. Minor league salaries being what they are, too, most Storm players are housed with local host families.

It was with Lake Elsinore that Headley first began to truly understand a major difference between amateur and professional baseball.

“This was my first full season, my first 140-game season,” Headley said. “That’s a huge step, the first time you go out and play for five months in a row, just about every day. You have to learn how to prepare yourself to play every single day, and with that many games, you don’t always feel your best.

“It’s exhausting, mentally and physically. Your body’s hurting. Your legs are gone. Mentally, you’re just not used to that grind, the ups and downs. The challenge is to get yourself ready to play each and every night, and it’s extremely difficult.”

Not so much time has passed that Headley, Blanks and Hundley can’t remember what it felt like, to be starting their second or third year of pro baseball and knowing they still have A, AA and AAA between them and where they’re trying to get.

“At this level, it seems so far away, almost unreachable,” Headley said. “But that’s kinda what’s neat about coming back here. Those guys over there (in the Storm clubhouse) feel like the big leagues are 10 years away.

“It’s neat to be able to let them know that if you take it game by game, step by step, you can get there pretty quick. It’s not as far as it seems.”